Around the Jewish World

By JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY

article created on: 2009-04-01T00:00:00

NATION

After Madoff, donations come in to help Wiesel

LOS ANGELES (JTA)—Unsolicited private donors are trying to help Elie Wiesel in the aftermath of the Bernard Madoff scandal.

Wiesel, the Nobel Prize-winning author, lost several million dollars of his personal fortune and his foundation took a $15.2 million hit in the Ponzi scheme.

In recent months, small and large donations totaling $400,000 have flowed into The Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, the Conde Nast Portfolio business magazine’s Web site disclosed March 26. Some of the money was given directly to Wiesel and his wife Marion, but the couple turned everything over to the foundation.

“At any moment it would have been an amazing outpouring of generosity,” Marion Wiesel told Portfolio.com, “but specifically in these times it’s so amazing, and it continues.”

Donations to the Wiesel Foundation, which supports afterschool centers in Israel, international conferences and various humanitarian awards and prizes, have ranged from $5 to $100.

At a panel discussion March 26 sponsored by Portfolio, Elie Wiesel said of Madoff, “We gave him everything, we thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands.”

Wiesel added that he could never forgive Madoff, who is now in jail awaiting sentencing.

AIPAC testifies on Israel aid

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The head of a pro-Israel lobby group testified on Capitol Hill about the importance of U.S. aid to Israel.

Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told the House Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee that “American assistance to Israel serves vital U.S. national security interests and advances critical U.S. foriegn policy goals.”

He requested that Israel receive $2.775 billion in military aid in fiscal year 2010, as called for in the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel that allocates $30 billion in aid for the Jewish state over 10 years.

Poll: Jews support strong U.S. peace role

WASHINGTON (JTA)—American Jews favor an active U.S. role in the Middle East peace process even if it means exerting pressure on Israel, according to a poll.

The survey by J Street, which backs assertive U.S. engagement in the peace process and markets itself as an alternative to the more hard-line views that it claims dominate many other pro-Israel organizations, also found that Yisrael Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman is not popular among American Jews and that President Obama and his policies on the Middle East garner more than 70 percent approval in the American Jewish community.

The survey of 800 self-identified American Jews by Gerstein Agne Strategic Communications was conducted Feb. 28 to March 8 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

One issue on which the community was evenly split was how to deal with Iran. Forty-one percent did not favor a military attack on Iran “if they are on the verge of developing nuclear weapons,” while 40 percent supported such a strike. And 39 percent favored “direct negotiations” with the Iranians while 37 percent supported international sanctions.

According to the poll, 88 percent of respondents favored the United States playing “an active role” in helping the parties resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, with 64 percent of those favoring an “active role” saying they would continue to back it even if it meant “exerting pressure on Israel.” Overall, 57 percent of those surveyed would support such pressure.

In addition, 69 percent said that if Hamas and the Palestinian Authority form a unified government, it would support the United States working with such a government to achieve a peace agreement with Israel.

Farrakhan: ‘Israeli lobby’ controls U.S. government

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Louis Farrakhan said the “Israeli lobby controls the government of the United States of America.”

In excerpts released by the Anti-Defamation League of his annual Saviours’ Day speech on March 1 in Chicago, the Nation of Islam leader also said Congress was “terrorized” by the lobby and doesn’t “act for the American people that sent you to Congress, but acts for “the money and interests that have bought your soul.”

Farrakhan said Israelis are “liars, thieves, murderers” who have “taken the position of God” and are out to “kill everybody.” He also appeared to question the accuracy of Holocaust records.

“You can’t even engage in constructive argument over the veracity of the figures of the Holocaust. We know something happened, sure, but you can’t talk about” it, Farrakhan said. “In certain cities in Europe they arrest you and put you in prison for denying such.”

AJC, ADL urge AIPAC prosecution to reconsider

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Two top Jewish groups are urging the Justice Department to reconsider its prosecution of former AIPAC staffers Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

“The prosecution creates a chilling effect on legitimate speech,” American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris said in a statement March 25. “Based upon the facts that the government has divulged thus far, we hope the Department of Justice will take a close look at this case and reconsider whether it should be pursued further.”

After the AJC statement was issued, the Anti-Defamation League released a letter it had sent privately last September to the deputy attorney general to “review the charges, the investigation, and the prosecution of this case.”

Their letter said that the “prosecution of this case endangers core First Amendment protections not just for AIPAC, but for the media and anyone who, in the course of their work, discusses with government officials something that a prosecutor later decides was protected national defense information.”

Rosen and Weissman have been charged with illegally passing on classified information under the 1917 Espionage Act. American Jewish groups have generally refrained from much public comment on the case, although the AJC was the first group to break that silence two years ago when it praised the trial judge for rebuking the prosecution’s failure to try the case expeditiously.

Left-wing coalition wants U.S. to attend Durban II

WASHINGTON (JTA)—A coalition of left-wing groups is calling on President Obama to attend the Durban II conference on racism next month.

The group of 40 progressive organizations and more than 90 individual activists said in a letter delivered March 28 to the White House that a boycott of the United Nations-sponsored conference “would be inconsistent with your policy of engagement with the international community,” noting that “given the brutal history of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States, your Administration has much to contribute to that discussion.”

Signers include the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and Ramsey Clark’s radical and anti-Israel International Action Center.

The letter adds that the U.S. administration’s current position is “even more radical” than the George W. Bush administration, which “at least attended” the first Durban conference in 2001 before withdrawing, and “provides cover for other countries” that do not wish to discuss racism. It adds that the “specific objections” of the Obama administration do not warrant a boycott.

MIDDLE EAST

Israeli drones reportedly attacked Sudan convoys

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israel used unmanned drones to attack Iranian convoys in Sudan on their way to smuggle arms into Gaza, a British newspaper reported.

The long-range missiles being smuggled to Hamas in two convoys at the end of January and in the first week of February had the range to strike Tel Aviv and Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona, according to the report in the Sunday Times.

At least 50 smugglers were killed in the attacks, the Sunday Times reported.

Sudanese officials had blamed the strike on American forces, but a Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said the attack “most probably involved Israel.”

The January airstrike took place in a remote desert area of eastern Sudan, the officials said, according to Reuters.

Anonymous U.S. officials told The New York Times that Israeli warplanes carried out the January attack. Israel has refused to confirm or deny the attacks.

Gaza still smuggling weapons, intel chief says

JERUSALEM (JTA)—At least 22 tons of explosives have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip since Israel’s military offensive ended, Israel’s intelligence chief said.

In addition, dozens of tons of raw material to produce weapons, as well as rockets, missiles and mortar shells, have crossed into Gaza since the end of Operation Cast Lead, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told Israel’s Cabinet.

Diskin said Egyptian efforts to halt the smuggling across its border with Gaza have improved. He also said that several terror organizations operating in Gaza have plans to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

Iranian official: No dialogue with U.S. until bomb is built

BERLIN (JTA)—A high-level Iranian official said that Iran will not dialogue with the United States until Iran has a nuclear bomb.

Remarks by the secretary general of Iranian Hezbollah were reported in Berlin from a March 26 symposium on “Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah: Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial.”

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi reportedly told the Iranian state news agency Shabestan that Iran “will arrange contacts to America as soon as we build our own bomb.”

“If one is not allowed to build an atom bomb, then no contacts are allowed. And if there are to be contacts, then it will be necessary to build the atom bomb,” Kharrazi said, according to a translation from the original Farsi, reported by Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a senior research fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy.

Olmert delivers farewell

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Ehud Olmert wished his successor success during farewell remarks at the weekly Cabinet meeting March 29.

“I very much hope that the new government will continue to act on the important and central issues that this government has dealt with,” the outgoing prime minister said. “I have no doubt that Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government will do its utmost in order to realize the State of Israel’s dream to live in peace and security, with quality of life and in an atmosphere of joy and satisfaction—the dream that every government has hoped for, acted on behalf of and done its utmost to realize.”

Netanyahu’s government was sworn in March 30.

Olmert thanked the “thousands of government officials” who “come in the morning, work hard, receive salaries—which are usually not very high—and do their work reputably, faithfully, with care and reliability, and especially with love for this country.”

Hamas romps in union voting

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Hamas swept the 11 seats in voting for the teachers’ union at U.N. schools in the Gaza Strip.

Elections were held March 25.

Hamas has run the teachers’ unions of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency schools for the past 16 years, controlling U.N. schools and other academic institutions in Gaza.

The Palestine Liberation Organization won elections for two other UNRWA workers’ groups, with five of seven seats of the employees’ union and five out of nine in the services’ union, and will form the next Executive Council of the General Workers’ Union, according to the Post. Voter turnout was 97 percent, with 10,100 workers participating.

Second Israeli gas site found

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Natural gas has been discovered at a second site off the Israeli coast. The discovery off the coast of the northern city of Hadera in the Mediterranean Sea comes several weeks after a large amount of natural gas was discovered near Haifa.

The discovery comes three weeks after drilling started at the Dalit-1 test site. The preliminary signs showed quantities of natural gas in the sandy layers of the seabed, according to Ha’aretz. It is too early to determine the quantity and quality of the gas, according to reports.

Noble Energy, a U.S. company, is the largest shareholder in the project. Noble is in partnership with several Israeli energy companies.

WORLD

Brazilian bishop twists Shoah

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA)—A Catholic archbishop in Brazil minimized the Holocaust and declared that Jews dominate the world media.

Dadeus Grings, the archbishop of Porto Alegre, declared that “more Catholics than Jews have died in the Holocaust, but this is not usually told because Jews own the world’s propaganda.”

In a six-page interview that appeared March 27 in the Brazilian trade magazine Press & Advertising, Grings went on to say, “How many millions of Catholics were victims of the Holocaust? Twenty-two million? The Jews say they were the major victims but the major victims were the Gypsies, who were exterminated. And they don’t mention this.”

Porto Alegre is home to Brazil’s third largest Jewish community, with some 12,000 Jews.

Grings is the second Catholic bishop in recent months to publicly minimize the Holocaust.

Richard Williams, who headed a seminary in Argentina, caused a furor over his public denial that gas chambers were used to murder Jews during World War II and over claims that no more than 300,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis.

His rehabilitation by Pope Benedict XVI in January after decades of exclusion over his membership in an ultra-right traditionalist sect sparked a rift in Catholic-Jewish ties.

Janet Rosenberg Jagan, ex-Guyana president, dies

MIAMI (JTA)—Janet Rosenberg Jagan, Guyana’s only female president and one of the few Jewish heads of state in Caribbean history, has died.

Rosenberg, a veteran politician and co-founder of Guyana’s People’s Progressive Party, died March 28 from an abdominal aneurysm. She was 88.

She was believed to be the only Jew living in Guyana, a nation of 740,000 dominated by Hindus and Muslims of East Indian descent, and Christians of African origin.

Her husband, Cheddi Jagan, was elected president in 1992, and his wife took over the job shortly after his death in 1997. She resigned after nearly two years in office because of a heart attack.

Sale of Jewish property in Lithuania thwarted

PRAGUE (JTA)—A Lithuanian plan to sell a building that once housed the Vilna Ghetto Jewish library was halted by the U.S. Embassy, JTA has learned.

The library building, which the World Jewish Restitution Organization and Lithuanian Jewish community identify as Jewish community property, housed 450,000 books of Jewish literature in Vilnius under the Nazi occupation between1941 and 1943.

Herbert Block, an executive vice president with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and a top official with the restitution group, said the embassy in the Lithuanian capital had informed him by e-mail that the Foreign Ministry had acceded to the embassy’s request to cancel the sale, which was to have taken place April 8.

Lithuania is among the few countries in Europe that has yet to come up with a restitution or compensation plan for Jewish communal property.

The library is on a list of 438 buildings claimed as Jewish property that were taken over by the Communist government of Lithuania after World War II. The U.S. Embassy in Vilnius argued that the Lithuanian government should not be selling disputed properties.

The restitution organization and the Lithuanian Jewish community recently rejected a $41 million compensation package for property, saying the sum, and how it was to be paid out over 10 years only if it was feasible for the government, was insufficient.

With numerous delays by previous governments and now the current government, the restitution process remains stalled, said Andrew Baker, director of international Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Committee.

Chavez: No plans to resume Israel ties

CARACAS (JTA)—Venezuela’s president said he had no plans to resume ties with Israel in the wake of its military incursion in Gaza.

Hugo Chavez said in an interview March 29 with Al Jazeera that he would not consider resuming diplomatic relations until the Jewish state reconsiders its “genocidal attitude.”

Chavez made his comments in Doha, Qatar, where he was scheduled to attend the second Summit of Arab-South American countries beginning March 31. The conference is running in parallel with the Arab League summit currently meeting in the Qatari capital.

Chavez expelled the Israeli delegation in January to protest its military operation in Gaza.

In the same interview, Chavez reaffirmed his close relationship with Iran, referring to the nation and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as Venezuela’s best friend. Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

Ukrainian government returns more Torahs

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA)—Ukraine returned more Torah scrolls to local Jewish communities.

The government on March 27 transferred six old Torah scrolls to the Union of Religious Jewish Organizations of Ukraine.

Yakov Dov Bleich, the chief rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine who received the scroll fragments, told JTA that he considers the transfer a small step on the way toward all Torah scrolls and fragments being held in the Ukrainian State Archives being returned to their original communities.

Iran must pay $25 million to soldier’s kin

JERUSALEM (JTA)—A U.S. court ordered Iran to pay $25 million in restitution to the family of an Israeli soldier.

District Judge Ricardo Urbina awarded the money to the mother and siblings of Nachshon Wachsman, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who was 19 years old when he was kidnapped and killed in 1994 by Hamas terrorists. His mother and six brothers are all American citizens.

The money includes $5 million for Wachsman’s lost earnings potential, as well as his pain and suffering. Urbina also ordered Iran to pay 6 percent annual interest since the date of his death.

Wachsman was held captive for six days by Hamas in an Arab village near Jerusalem and died during a failed rescue attempt.

Iran has never responded to the lawsuit, which was filed in 2006. The lawsuit blames Iran for Wachsman’s death, since it trained the Hamas terrorists.

Gorbachev: Reagan discussed Soviet Jewry at every meeting

NEW YORK (JTA)—Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said President Reagan raised the plight of the Soviet Jewry in every meeting the two held.

The disclosure came March 26 at an event held by the American Jewish Historical Society at the Rainbow Room in New York City, organizers said. At the event, Gorbachev and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz recalled the emigration of Soviet Jews in the 1980s and 1990s in a discussion moderated by Charlie Rose.

Pope to meet Jewish, Muslim leaders in Israel

ROME (JTA)—Pope Benedict XVI will meet with political leaders and visit sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians during his May trip to Israel.

The Vatican announced on March 26 the Pope’s program for his trip to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. The pontiff flies from Rome to Amman, Jordan on May 8 and returns from Tel Aviv on May 15.

Benedict will meet with local Jewish and Muslim religious leaders as well as local Christian leaders of various denominations. He will visit the Aida Palestinian refugee camp, near Bethlehem, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, where he will hold a meeting with  organizations supporting interreligious dialogue.

The pope will celebrate public Mass in Amman, Bethlehem, the Valley of Josaphat and Nazareth.

Budget cuts could imperil Jewish burial

NEW YORK (JTA)—The New York City medical examiner warned that Jewish burial could be threatened by proposed budget cuts.

Dr. Charles Hirsch told a City Council hearing that the $7 million he has been ordered to cut from the medical examiner’s budget could hamper efforts to expedite the speedy burials of Jews and Muslims, The Associated Press reported.

Under Jewish custom, burial is supposed to take place as soon as possible after death. Hirsch said the cuts could delay the issuing of deaths certificates, a requirement for burial.